In the semiconductor industry, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is used to selectively remove portions of a film from a semiconductor wafer by rotating the wafer against a polishing pad (or rotating the pad against the wafer, or both) with a controlled amount of pressure in the presence of a chemically reactive slurry. Overpolishing (removing too much) or underpolishing (removing too little) of a film results in scrapping or rework of the wafer, which can be very expensive. Various methods have been employed to detect when the desired endpoint for removal has been reached, and the polishing should be stopped. One such method described in copending patent application Ser. No. 08/419,206 filed Apr. 10, 1995 entitled "In-Situ Monitoring of the Change in Thickness of Films," assigned to the present assignee, uses a sensor which can be located near the back of the wafer during the polishing process. As the polishing process proceeds, the sensor generates a signal corresponding to the film thickness, and can be used to indicate when polishing should be stopped.
Generating the signal and using the signal to control the CMP process for automatic endpoint detection are two different challenges, however. During polishing, different conditions may arise which can result in the signal falsely indicating that the endpoint has been reached. For example, the film can be locally non-planar (i.e. "cupped") under the sensor, or the film can be multi-layered (i.e. one type of metal over another). In each of these cases, the change in thickness of the film may not be constant and can even stop for a while under the sensor, so that a false endpoint can be detected. Another issue arises due to the fact that while a single sensor can respond to the thickness of a film in the immediate vicinity, it cannot directly monitor the entire film area on the wafer. Thus a certain amount of overpolishing is necessary to ensure that the entire film has been polished, and a way to determine the correct amount of overpolishing. In addition, the polishing process should be able to be easily and quickly custom-tailored to polishing different types of films, so that down time between lots is minimized. Finally, operator training should be easy, with minimal scrapping of wafers, and a polishing history for each wafer kept so that problem determination and resolution is simplified.
Thus there remains a need for a reliable, consistent system for detecting and determining the endpoint for chemical-mechanical polishing which solves the above-listed problems and is suitable for use in large-scale production.